


Shadow Road

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Persona 4
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, Gen, missing episode, slight AU, well ok not a missing episode but this would've made so much sense I think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 04:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6640825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, in a small country hospital, a little girl lay dying.</p>
<p>In one world, her brother and his friends raced to interrogate her killer.</p>
<p>In a mirroring one... a doctor's hearing aid died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow Road

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive the fight mechanics. I'm too high-strung to actually play video games (aaaa evil adrenaline, I end up a hissing freaked-out cartoon cat on the ceiling just trying to play Super Mario), so I watch LPs and anime. Kind of makes me clueless about the mechanics.
> 
>  
> 
> When you come to a fork in the road... take it. - Yogi Berra

Once upon a time, in a small country hospital, a little girl lay dying.  
  
In one world, her brother and his friends raced to interrogate her killer.  
  
In a mirroring one... a doctor's hearing aid died.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The hospital's darkened stairwell held the fading echoes of its third-floor fire door, slammed open by a succession of heedless teenagers, and the clatter of their footfalls as they raced downstairs to a murderer's hospital bed... until one leather-soled pair squeaked to a halt on textured concrete, and their owner grunted faintly as she caught herself on the metal handrail in stark realization.  
  
"What the hell, Naoto?!" tall, bleach-haired Kanji on the next flight down shouted, glowering up at her white face.  "Come on already!  Hey guys wait up--"  
  
"Apathy Syndrome," she murmured, bile rising in her throat.  
  
"What?"  
  
Naoto leaned over the rail and shouted, "Senpai!", her knuckles white on the bare metal.  Another flight and a half down, the rest of the group stared up at her, the gray-haired boy in the lead giving her a look that was just begging for a target.  "Senpai, I overheard a doctor just a minute ago-- _I know what's wrong with Nanako-chan_."  
  
The crack of hope in his face -- in the faces of everyone, but so much more apparent on Yu, as unflappable as he usually was -- hurt.  Naoto swallowed.  "And if I'm correct... we need to return to the television.  Immediately."  
  
Protests, of course, went up immediately from everyone else, but Naoto snapped, "Forget Namatame!  The man can wait!  Nanako-chan can't!"  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The gods may reward virtue.  
  
Usually, they just reward amusement.  
  
Sometimes, those are one and the same, and a little girl's heart is returned in secret to revive her dying body.  
  
Sometimes... you never get the chance to entertain them.  
  
So then what?  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"You may have heard of Apathy Syndrome two years ago on the news," Naoto said, with far too much composure for how she'd had to take a lap when they all squeezed into her chauffeur's car.  Junes was just too far from the hospital to walk -- or run -- the distance.  "It predated but was associated with a doomsday cult in Iwatodai."  The same city they'd taken their school trip to, and wasn't that odd to be mere coincidence?    
  
_Consider the matter later, Shirogane._  
  
"I'd mostly left it as an odd affliction, perhaps some sort of mass hysteria, and put it out of my mind until my recent research into Shadows and Personae.  It seemed quite improbable that we should be the first to encounter either, after all, nor that Inaba would be selected as a testing ground were it actually the first occurrence.  Japan is far too thickly populated and interconnected for an isolated and controlled experiment, however Inaba too distant from population centers for a mass attack..."  Yousuke shifted impatiently under her.  "But I digress.  
  
"One of Nanako's doctors was discussing the near-perfect match of her symptoms to advanced Apathy Syndrome as we passed by.  She's at the very bottom of the observed age range for the affliction..."  And wasn't murmuring about a NYX or doom in response to stimuli, but, other than those...  
  
"It's difficult to find the information, however with access to police records and witness reports," as well as Jungian psychology, and her own experience with the unprecedented exhaustion of having her Shadow manifest, and the equal yet opposite strength of a Persona, "I hypothesize that Apathy Syndrome occurs when a person's Shadow is not present in their body."  
  
Naoto flicked her gaze up to meet Yu-senpai's eyes.  "We need to retrieve Nanako's Shadow, before her--" _life_ "-- health gives out."  
  
"But... can we even take a Shadow out of the tv?" Rise murmured worriedly.  
  
"Well, Teddie comes out," Yousuke said, "and we don't even know what he is..."  
  
"Doesn't matter!  We're gonna have to!" Chie said.  
  
"But what if we _can't_?"  Rise repeated.  
  
Yukiko was frowning thoughtfully, sightlessly, towards the tangle of legs in the footwell.  "... There's a tv in her room," she murmured.  "It's rather small but maybe one of us can take her in that way?"  
  
"Just as long as we leave someone to swear that person just left.  Not Kanji," Yousuke said.  
  
"Hey!"  
  
"Come on, you're a terrible liar."  
  
"H-hey, shut up!"  
  
"She's in a coma," Yukiko said, heading off the argument. "What if she can't respond to her Shadow?"  
  
No one could answer.  Then, Rise asked, "How do we defeat a Shadow that hasn't been turned into a monster, anyway?"  
  
"Nanako's small enough," Chie pointed out. "We can just pick her Shadow up and haul it out."  
  
And all of that was all well and good, but, "Perhaps we should postpone planning for that eventuality until we discover whether it'll be required?"  
  
For the rest of the ride, no one said a word.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"She's not in Heaven!" Rise announced, there in the studio with its chalk-outlined floor.  A fierce scowl marred her pretty face, what was visible of it under Kanzeon's visor.  "She _is_ here, but..."  
  
Gods, how much Naoto had hoped to be wrong.  
  
Rise pointed obliquely off to one side of the path to Heaven.  "That way."  
  
Unlike most of the Shadow-influenced areas -- Yukiko's imposing castle, Rise's adult club, even sunny, flower-strewn Heaven -- the tv world's studio catwalks slowly gave way to sheltering country mountains and grass-lined canals without anything the least bit disturbing about them.  They looked as though they could've been pulled right from the parks of Inaba.  Perhaps a little more lush and green, but that may merely be from comparing breezy summer to the December it currently was in reality.  
  
The sheer normalcy made it perhaps the most disturbing landscape Naoto had seen in any part of the tv world.  
  
Shadows began burbling up out of the ground and from behind trees long before they reached a building, very nearly as soon as they'd lost sight of the last spire of studio lights, without a single gate or the usual swirl of red-and-black miasma marking an 'entrance' to Nanako's world.  
  
_Now, why is that?_ Naoto wondered, even as she shot at dolls and teddy bears, and her Persona mowed down a variety of ostensibly feminine things.  There was always an entrance... perhaps Teddie had been wrong about Nanako being too young, too psychologically undeveloped, to have a Shadow, but what if he'd been partially correct?  What if Nanako was merely too young to have a fully-developed delineation of her concept of self?  
  
They caught their breaths on a set of stairs up from the riverside parks, and then plunged on.  
  
Somewhere around the fourth level of brightly-painted playgrounds, endless rows of them too extensive to exist in reality, the parks began to show signs of occupancy.  Naoto paused while Yukiko was healing a burn on Yousuke, and bent to pick up a discarded baby doll at her feet.  It was worn and well-used, streaked with marker vaguely in makeup-like patterns, and its hair was that peculiar fluffy tangle that resulted when little girls brushed synthetic fibers.  One plastic hand sported miniature bite marks, blunt-toothed and clearly chewed on by...  
  
Well.  No.  Far too many of the Shadows had human teeth for this to be evidence of Nanako's Shadow passing by.  One could hope this was a memory of her own belongings, though.  
  
"Hey!  Naoto!  Keep up!"  
  
"Coming!"  Naoto dropped the doll and ran, leaving it forlorn in the dust.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
They found her in a grassy playground, twisted jungle gyms circling a broad space dotted with weedy flowers.  
  
"Oh.  Big bro."  
  
Her eyes glowed an eerie, luminescent yellow; her limbs jutted out of an old, well-mended kindergarten smock.  Its light blue had faded nearly to gray from years of laundry and sun-drying, and it had faint, unidentifiable stains down the front and along the hem.  Her knees and hands were grubby, one knee wiped clean and crossed by a fresh band-aid.  The battered doll -- the same one Naoto had left behind several levels down the mountain -- hung limp in her fist.  
  
She looked past them curiously, and the look she turned on them was far too knowing.  "You didn't bring me."  Her expression darkened.  "You're still keeping all this secret from me."  
  
Yu tensed.  "Nana--"  
  
"All those times you left me alone," she interrupted, "you were coming _here_."  Her face twisted. "What if you'd never come _back_?  You sneak and liar," she yelled, those glowing eyes tearing free of Yu just to cut across the rest of them.  "Everybody lies.  Mommy wasn't in heaven at _all_."  
  
Mommy?  
  
"But _that's okay_ ," she sneered, sing-song and rote, mocking in a way that could only mean it was something the real Nanako told herself constantly.  "She took me out and was very sorry, and gave me presents!"  She hugged the doll tightly, beaming so hard her eyes squeezed shut... then sobered, one yellow eye slitting slyly open.  "But you chased her away, you big meanie."  Both eyes open again, smile sharpening to something mindless and cruel.  "Big bro is a _big mean lying sneak_ , but _that's okay_.  She doesn't have to be here.  Mommy showed me how to deal with _you_."  
  
What--?  
  
The Shadow began to laugh, high-pitched, insane laughter that quickly turned into a shriek, as darkness rippled around Nanako's slight figure.  
  
Impossible!  Nanako wasn't here to reject it--!  
  
The darkness grew, shaping itself with the sickening sticky-slick sound of viscera over a throaty gurgling roar.  
  
Towering over the team, eight-limbed and bulbous -- cracked plastic around a single glowing eye, dark hair in beribboned pigtails -- it balanced on four spindly legs like a table, and stretched damaged doll-like hands towards them.  Naoto dodged -- barely -- and one molded plastic foot came down with a thud that sent grit flying into her face.  Her hand flew to her holstered gun, fingertips freezing on the rough grip even as bile rose in her throat.  
  
Not Nanako-chan.  Naoto swallowed.  She couldn't-- they couldn't possibly attack Nanako-chan.  But--!  
  
_Megidola_ \--  
  
The spell slid through her grasp like water-- she could all but feel it drain away.  
  
_I can't--?_ She couldn't cast Megidolaon.  _What do I have?!_  
  
"Senpai!" Rise's voice echoed in Naoto's head, reflecting in her peculiar way off Yu's.  "Her hit points are super low, but she's nullified all our big attacks!  We can't use them!"  
  
Bufu, Agi, Zio -- the elements, both those that resonated and those that repelled, seemed to almost audibly click as she shuffled through that odd spot in her mind where Persona and self met; she'd never gotten a plausible explanation for that -- Dia... Naoto's spells had never been so small.  
  
Naoto glanced up from her mental search just in time to kick herself backwards and roll with the hit.  Fly with it.  She hit something that grunted instead of snapped, and tumbled with it until it hit something else with a painful-sounding thump and stopped.  
  
The breathless curses under her elbow were most definitely Kanji.  Ow.  
  
_Broken doll on a shelf_ , Naoto thought, mind working furiously even as she tried to breathe.    
  
Faintly fizzy warmth sizzled across Naoto, and the ache from the hit lessened.  Barely.  She managed to push herself half-upright despite the worryingly sharp pain in her ribs, took aim, and shot -- _not Nanako_ \-- the table leg.  It pinged audibly, two points.  
  
_You don't play with broken dolls._  
  
Chie leapt over the Shadow's next swipe.  Her foot still caught on the plastic fingertip, and she tumbled head over heels, skidding to a halt and leaping back up quickly enough she probably wasn't hurt.  Several meters away from her, Yousuke tossed a Garu after his knife and lopped off the fingertip, and the Shadow screeched.  
  
"How--" Naoto mouthed, not enough air in her lungs to shout.  Yes, they'd fought her Shadow -- fought all of theirs -- but they barely knew her then... certainly didn't lo-- and Naoto wasn't a _child_ , whatever her Shadow had said about her feelings, none of them were children--  
  
Except, Nanako was.  And yet--  
  
"Mazio!"  Kanji how could you.  
  
_If you love a broken doll, you put it away safe on a shelf._  
  
\-- and yet, they were hitting her.  Shadow.  Her Shadow.  
  
Tears in their eyes, screams in their throats, but... They weren't even aiming at the Shadow's table legs.    
  
_Sometimes you take the doll down to show people._  
  
Another hit missed Yousuke by scarce centimeters, and the floor cracked under the Shadow's fist, sending up billows of dust and knocking everyone off their feet.  
  
Rise, far in the back and farthest from the cloud, coughed her airways clear.  "Nanako!"  
  
_Sometimes you dust it, so it stays nice._  
  
Someone's Agi burnt away frizzy hair, melted a patch of pink-scribbled cheek into a smooth divot the size of a dinner plate.  
  
_But mostly..._  
  
"Nanako-chan!"  
  
... _mostly..._  
  
"Nanako--"  
  
_You walk past the shelf every day..._  
  
Oh.  
  
_And you forget it exists._  
  
Naoto struggled to her feet, the realization tearing itself from her throat.  "We won't let you be forgotten!"  
  
Everything seemed to stop, just for a moment.  Then...  
  
"Sraosha!"  
  
It had glassy butterfly wings and a streamer of pink kilt, and flashed past Naoto in a blur of pale blue.  She'd seen it before -- the same Persona Yu had used against Namatame -- but this time, the spirit didn't spread a scroll and send up a ring of ofuda and light.  Instead, it tackled the cracked doll with a roar that fled into inaudible hypersonics, wedging taloned fingers into the breaks in the plastic and snapping it apart like a boiled crab.  
  
It shrieked again, and now Naoto could hear it was a scream of rage, not pain.  Something small and blue-smocked hovered inside the pieces of the doll, pieces which were evaporating into shadowy nothingness even as the small figure floated slowly to the ground.  
  
When Sraosha vanished, all that was left was Nanako, in her too-small kindergarten smock and grubby knees, crying into her hands.  
  
Yu wobbled forward, and dropped to his knees before the tiny Shadow.  "Hey," he murmured.  "You feeling any better?"  
  
She hiccupped, tears streaming down her face as she looked at Yu, but flinched away when he reached for her.  
  
Yu's hands fell.  "I'm not going to hurt you."  
  
"I hurt _you_."  
  
"I don't care."  
  
"I'll do it again!" she snapped.  "I'm mean and bad and--"  
  
"And I love you."  The words caught in Nanako's throat.  Yu added, gently, "We all love you, Nanako.  Even when you're upset and hurting... you don't have to be perfect, or perfectly happy, to be loved."  
  
She stared at him, and he opened his arms hopefully, waiting.  
  
After a long, painful moment, she flung her arms around his neck.  "I want my Daddy!" she wailed, and went up in a flare of blue light.  Naoto just barely caught a glimpse of a card -- one identical to Yu's Persona cards -- rotating slowly in Yu's cupped hands, before it disappeared into his chest.  
  
Yu held his hands over his heart for a long moment, eyes closed, then slowly got to his feet.  
  
"All right, then.  Come on, guys.  Now we can take Nanako's Shadow back."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
As they wound their way cautiously back to the exit point, since it'd be slower to hurry and end up waylaid by Shadows, Naoto fell into step with Yu.  "How did you break through the block?" she asked quietly.  
  
Yu glanced at her, considering.  Then...  "What you said.  It... resonated."  
  
"Resonated?"  
  
"My parents..."  He glanced away, just fleeting enough to see his gaze flick, before returning his usual steady look upon her.  "They're always busy, and their jobs take us around a lot.  I've never actually stayed somewhere long enough to be... remembered.  Not by friends or by family."  He exhaled, a little puff of almost amusement.  "I didn't even recognize my own uncle when I arrived here.  I guess I hadn't seen him since I was a baby... no pictures, either."  
  
Not even one of Dojima-san, so that Yu would recognize the man meeting him at the station?  Naoto thought.  Then she realized... No one, not Yu nor his parents, had expected anyone to do so.  They'd probably put him on the train, or more likely just bought the tickets and expected him to make his way to the city station from their previous residence, with nothing but a page of directions to the Dojima residence in his pocket.  
  
Yu was just as much the doll on the shelf as Nanako was.  
  
But by the team's accounts, Yu had his Persona first...  
  
"How did you face a Shadow like that alone?" Naoto wondered aloud.  
  
"I never did."  
  
Wait, what?  
  
Yousuke interrupted the conversation as if he hadn't noticed it taking place.  Which, well, he was on point, so he probably hadn't.  "Hey, guys?  I was thinking..."  
  
"Don't hurt yourself," Chie teased.  
  
"Very funny.  I'm serious!  You guys heard Nanako say Mommy took her outta Heaven and stuff?"  Naoto's train of thought clicked over, and her eyes widened in realization just as Yousuke continued, "It's just, we've got all the people who can go into the TV accounted for.  We're here, Namatame's in the hospital, and Teddie...  Well, Nanako knows him, he wouldn't have to fake being a lady to get her to come with him, right?  So, who's Mommy?"  
  
Kanji cursed under his breath.  
  
Naoto rather felt the same.  "More importantly," she said into the horrified silence, "Is Mommy still here?"  
  
"Auugh, Naoto-kun!" Chie groaned. "Don't say stuff like that!"  
  
"Guys?"  Yu, as always, caught their attention with a single word.  "Run."  
  
They bolted.  But Naoto's thoughts kept clicking along...  
  
Yu gained a Persona without facing his Shadow.  Namatame had never entered the TV and yet had the ability.  Yu had the ability as well, but Naoto knew she hadn't prior to her kidnapping; she'd actually tested their ludicrous claim after they'd made it, and the screen had been perfectly ordinary plastic.  
  
Who'd given Yu and Namatame the ability?  
  
Who was Mommy?

**Author's Note:**

> So I was thinking, and it doesn't actually make sense how your choice about Namatame determines Nanako's fate... unless Izanami interfered. Or, possibly, the Velvet Room. Either way, someone must've been watching to see if you would fall to despair and vengeance and stuff Namatame into the TV to die. Since Izanami was the one giving out TV power to see what people did with it, it makes sense that it would be her.
> 
> Also, I don't think Nanako would be too young to have a Shadow, because Ken in Persona 3 was old enough to get a Persona triggered at age... eight, I think it was. And Nanako is way too well-behaved and diligent for a seven-year-old in general. Something's getting stuffed away and I think it's the bulk of her loneliness, resentment, and normal child behavior.
> 
> So... Nanako Shadow boss fight!


End file.
